The Place Called In-between (Part #1)

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“You know what you need?” she asked him while trying to lick her ice cream off her palm, “You need to take a break,” she wiped her hand on the back pocket of her jeans, “like go to some hilly area.”

She looked up and found him smiling.

A 26-years-old media professional in a really small agency in a really big city where she lived from the past two decades – this was Simar for the world. For

“Hello!” Simar waved her hands in front of him trying to get his attention, “You think so much, but have you ever thought why there’s hills in the idiom run for the hills?”

There wasn’t even a single person who was not amused by such analogies of Simar and Mickey was no exception. She goes quiet after releasing the hook to see if the other person would probe further.

Mickey leaned back on the seat of the bus stop they were sitting on and asked, “Why is there hills in that idiom?”

Right cue and she started, “Look, run for the hills means running away after a disaster. Your separation is a disaster too na?” It took him a few moments to realise that she sought his confirmation. He pursed his lips, tilted his head to scratch his neck.

“So, you agree! The disaster has happened. It’s time for the response. And the ideal response is to run for the hilllllsss….” she said wiggling her fingers to resemble running. He felt an urge to smoke and popped his gum in his mouth, “Where should we go?”

“We?”

“Yeah, it’s your idea and my disaster. So, we both should go together.”

“Okay! Pack your bags. We’ll leave this Friday evening. I’ll text you the basics. And you know I don’t like baggage, so keep it neat and tiny,” delivering another of her puns with a wink, she jumped up and walked off towards her office.

Only Simar could pull off such spontaneity, he thought and got up to return to his studio.

Mickey was a 31-years-old painter who owned an art gallery in the heart of the city. According to his friends, he made it big pretty early in life with most of his surreal portraits of regular people selling for over a lakh each. According to his family, he was a failure for leaving his graduation in the final year, marrying a girl outside his caste and bringing shame to his kins by later separating from her, and then moving to a metro city for no good reason. After all, in Chhattisgarh everything was in his favour.

“We’re rich, and wealthy. Look at this mansion! How could this feel smaller than your 2-room apartment, that pigeonhole you live in?” his mother would often ask him on weekend calls. “None of our family is there. I heard, people in Delhi often assume you’re from Africa!”

His mother wasn’t wrong, but he was looking for some peace and space and those things had nothing to do with the visible size of a place.

Mickey cared little for people’s opinions. It’s right that he is all alone and this feeling often gnawed on his insides. Luckily, he was an artist whose “ventings” people measured in real money.

And yet, the tides of emotions and thoughts that spiral into typhoons never left him alone.

It took him a bit longer than usual today to reach his studio. He buzzed the door and a beautiful woman greeted him with a casual smile.

Hey, reader!

This is one of my first attempts at writing a short story as and when the plot shows itself to me. Please bear with me. I have the character arc planned already but rest of it is still pending.

Drop in your comments about how you liked it, your ideas, your questions, etc. and come back to read more. I hope to make this a pleasant read, totally worth your time.

I’m also taking my Alexa Rank further with Blogchatter through their #MyFriendAlexa campaign. This is my second post in that series and my blog’s rank last time was 7,734, 829.